Introducing the Talking CFD podcast

This week I launched a new podcast for CFD-ers called Talking CFD – it's an interview show where I pick the brains of successful CFD entrepreneurs to learn lessons that you & I can use to help grow (or start) our own businesses in the computational fluid dynamics space. It's much more about business models than turbulence models.

The first 3 episodes went live this week & thanks to the magic of the internets you should be able to hear them below. There will be a new, commute-friendly, 30ish-minute show each week from now until the middle of May.

We'll finish up this first season of shows with a live virtual Q&A session featuring most of the guests from this first season & you asking the questions.

Episode 01 – Introducing Talking CFD

This first episode is a micro-episode – it's just me giving you an idea of what I hope Talking CFD will be, a bit of my background & motivation to do this, plus a quick heads-up about the end-of-season roundtable.

Episode 02 – Paul Bemis of CoolSim

Paul & I talk about some of the lessons he's learned building CoolSim (the data centre airflow modelling application) including:

• their client-server approach to building a software-as-a-service offering on top of Ansys Fluent;
• how that client-server setup gives them a distinct advantage when it comes to the all-important customer support;
• the merits of focusing on a niche market and becoming a domain expert in that niche;
• plus why teaching via webinars has become one of their strongest marketing & customer acquisition channels.

Episode 03 – Wolfgang Gentzsch of UberCloud

In this episode Wolfgang & I discuss some of the nuances of building a cloud HPC offering for simulation, including:

• the evolution of UberCloud from an idea through the experimentation phase, vendor marketplace phase to a provider of computing as a service;
• building a community of interested parties - end-users, software providers & infrastructure providers - learning what they need & then building it;
• how Docker has shaped the evolution of UberCloud and just how important it will be in simulation software provision;

If more than an hour of content in a LinkedIn post is a bit much then hop over to Talking CFD and drop your email address in the sign-up box. You'll get links to subscribe to the show in your favourite podcatcher, a heads-up when new episodes drop & you'll be the first to know the details of the end-of-season Q&A roundtable – happy listening.